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Think your favorite recreation spot is protected from oil and gas drilling? Not necessarily. In fact, all public lands, including national parks and wildlife refuges, are potentially open to oil and gas leasing, except for areas specially designated as “Wilderness.”

A new national survey reveals that sportsmen and sportswomen think protecting public lands, getting kids outdoors and dealing with climate change are just as important as energy production and gun rights.

National Wilderness Month marks a time for considering what wilderness means to us as individuals and as a nation. Ironically, this Wilderness Month comes during one of the most anti-wilderness Congresses in modern history.

Alaska’s Tongass National Forest is an amazing landscape of rainforest-covered mountains and islands that provide habitat for salmon, bear, deer, wolves, and the Alaska people who have spent decades seeing the forest as a source of income from logging.

For months we have been frustrated at Congress for not moving (or passing for that matter!) any wilderness bills. In fact, as our report Wilderness Under Siege makes clear, there are now at least 13 bills pending in the U.S.